XAML and GIS

This is the forth blog in a series of posts reviewing the new ArcGIS Runtime (beta) mapping SDK. The new SDK will be a great companion for any Windows developer wanting to add map functionality to their apps. In part 3, we looked at the MapView control within the SDK. One of the dependency properties that I left off in that post is the LocationDisplay property. This post will go into that property extensively. Working with location is probably my favorite part of the new ArcGIS Runtime mapping SDK because it is just so damn simple. In most mapping SDKs (eg: Nokia, Bing) you must do the work of hooking up to location changes, and updating the map. In the ArcGIS Runtime mapping SDK, it’s handled for you if you opt in for this functionality. Start off by downloading the sample application (if you have not done so already). The LocationDisplay property of the MapView provides access to the LocationDisplay class. This class provides access to all the properties that make working with locat... [More]

This is the third in a series of posts covering the new ArcGIS Runtime SDK. In part 2, I discussed the basic mapping layers within the ArcGIS Runtime. Now that we know how to add a map and layers to your app, let’s see what we can do with the map! As I mentioned in the first post, the new ArcGIS Runtime has a MapView, rather than a Map that you put in your app. The MapView has a Map property that must be set, but all of the functionality lies in the MapView. We’ll start out with some of the key dependency properties. We’ll then look at the map events, and finish with the few methods. Dependncy Properties The new MapView control has 11 dependency properties (with one additional attached dependency property). In this blog we’ll focus on seven of them. Not to worry about the other four. One we have already covered (Map), one will be covered in the next blog and two more when discussing GIS focused work. In this blog I’ll cover the following dependency properties. MapGrid Maximum... [More]

This is a second in a series of posts covering the new ArcGIS Runtime (beta). In the last post we walked through creating a simple map app. In this post we’ll start to cover the different layers your map can have. A Layer can be map images like what you would see in Google or Bing Maps. Or a Layer can represent the physical location of items. Layers can be toggled on and off through the IsVisible property. You can also adjust the transparency of a layer with the Opacity property. The ArcGIS Runtime SDK comes with 12 different types of map layers that you can use in your app! Some of these I’ll cover in detail in this blog, some I’ll just barely cover, and some will have whole blogs dedicated to them. I like to group the layers into two basic categories. The layers for “basic mapping” and layers for “GIS users”. I consider basic mapping to be any app in the store that uses a map in any way. Some examples would be Four Square, or Disney Expedition. Layers for GIS users are needed ... [More]

This is the first in a series of posts that will go over the new ArcGIS Runtime SDK. This first post will discuss how to get started and create an app that has the ArcGIS Runtime Map. This first step is to download the SDK. The SDK is currently in beta so you will need to sign up for the beta program. It’s important to note that you will not be able to get the SDK from nuget. Esri packages their installers a little differently than you might be used it. The exe that you download is a zip of the actual installer. Run the ArcGIS_Runtime_SDK_for_DotNet_1022_536.exe (as of writing this the file is missing the exe extension, so you’ll need to add it) and you will be prompted for a location to unpackage the installer. Give it a location, once it completes it will run the actual Setup.exe. We’ll be building a Windows Store app with the SDK so you’ll need Visual Studio 2013. The SDK does not support Windows 8 apps, only Windows 8.1 apps. For Windows Phone and WPF you can use Visual S... [More]

Last Sunday (March 9) Esri announced the public beta release of their mapping SDK for .NET. This new SDK covers Windows Store, Windows Phone, and WPF. Can you believe it? All three platforms, and all using the same API. This is huge news if you develop mapping applications. Personally I find it painful that in Windows Phone 7 you would use the Bing Maps (Silverlight) SDK. In Windows Phone 8 you were encouraged to use the new Nokia Maps SDK, while on Windows Store you had the Bing Maps SDK, but it was a different SDK than the Windows Phone 7 one. So that’s three different SDKs to use. I have no idea who thought this was a sane idea. Esri has been working hard on this new SDK. During the Devsummit last year (2014), Esri announced the beta of a new SDK that would target Windows Store. At that time, they already had a Windows Phone SDK and a WPF SDK. Both were very similar with a few extras on the WPF side. While working on this new beta for Windows Store, they decided it would be much be... [More]

Managing extents within the ArcGIS .Net client API’s is pretty simple. Esri has an example on the resources page. I implemented one for the ArcFM Silverlight SDK sample. Oddly enough, they are quite similar. I don’t remember copying theirs, but you never know. Like most things we as developers do, after a couple of years you look back and wonder “What was I thinking?” I look back at my original code and wonder why did I implement the Extents class the way that I did. I originally used one List to hold all of the Extents. This made some of the code pretty ugly. I’ve created a different implementation that utilizes two stacks. I have one class that manages all of the extents: 1: public class Extents
2: {
3: private readonly Stack<Envelope> _backStack = new Stack<Envelope>();
4: private readonly Stack<Envelope> _forwardStack = new Stack<Envelope>();
5:
6: public bool HasPrevi... [More]